Sharpe's Waterloo (37 page)

So this time the French would do it differently. This time they had a surprise of their own, something to counter the overlapping line and the overpowering musket-fire.

But that surprise must wait till the two sides were close enough to stare into each other's eyes. That confrontation was still some minutes away for the British lines were still in hiding, and the French columns still had to climb the gentle slope in the face of the waiting guns.

‘Fire!' The gunner officers shouted along the ridge.

The portfires touched the fire to the quills of mealed powder that flashed the flame down to the charge in the fabric bags, and the guns crashed back on their trails, their wheels jumping clear out of the mud before smashing down yards back from where they had started.

Smoke instantly blotted the ridge.

The nine-pounder balls screamed down the hill and slashed into the marching files. One ball could kill a score of men. The missiles drove into the massed ranks; flensing, smashing, breaking bones, spattering flesh and blood deep into the heavy masses.

‘Close up! Close up!' the French Sergeants shouted.

The marching ranks clambered over the writhing bodies to close the ranks. The drummers beat harder and faster, quickening the bloody moment. The men in the centre raised their bayonet-tipped muskets as they cheered their hero.
‘Vive l'Empereur!'

On the ridge the gun crews worked like whipped slaves. The spongeman, his rammer tipped with a soaking wet sleeve of fleece, forced the wet material down the smoking barrel. The gun had to be cleared of the scraps of still burning powder and canvas that could ignite and explode the next charge. The sudden compression of air as the rammer thrust with the fleece could explode the residues of unburnt powder that was caked to the breech walls, so a gunner, wearing a leather thumbstall, pressed his thumb over the vent to stop the airflow.

The wet fleece was dragged clear and the loader shoved the new charge bag into the barrel, then topped it with the roundshot and wad grommet. The spongeman reversed his rammer and thrust the shot home, shouting as it reached the breech. The shout alerted the ventsman that the charge was ready. He rammed his spike down the touchhole to pierce the canvas powder bag, then thrust the quill of finely mealed powder into the hole he had made. The rammer was already soaking the fleece in a bucket of water, ready for the next shot as the two remaining gunners of the crew heaved on a handspike to lever the gun's trail round so that the loaded barrel pointed through the smoke of the last shot at the approaching enemy.

‘Ready!' a Corporal shouted.

‘Stand back!' The officer put his hands to his ears. ‘Fire!'

The cannon crashed back again. This time it had to be run forward, dragged through the muddy scars of its first two firings. Musket-balls from the French skirmishers were whiplashing close, but the gun's smoke protected the crew as they reloaded.

‘Double shot! Double shot!' A gunner officer galloped his horse behind the battery. ‘Double shot!' The officer, galloping clear of the smoke, had seen the closest column's inexorable progress up the slope and knew it was time to raise the stakes.

This time, instead of loading with roundshot alone, the gunners rammed a canister of musket-balls on top of the roundshot. Now each blast would spread a halo of deadly bullets about the heavy missile.

‘Fire!'

The canister shredded, punched apart by the roundshot, and a great gap was ripped bloody in the nearest French column. The Emperor's men were leaving a trail of blood and bodies now, but the attack was still massive and heavy. The French galloper guns were firing from the valley's floor, seeking the British nine-pounders behind their screen of smoke. French cavalry had advanced onto the flanks of the outermost columns, protecting them from the threat of British horsemen. This was how war should be fought; the three arms supporting each other and victory just a drumbeat away across a ridge top which, to the advancing French, seemed almost empty. They saw the cannons and their smoke, and they saw the flitting silhouettes of the retreating skirmishers, and they saw a handful of mounted officers waiting beyond the crest, but they saw no enemy lines because the redcoats still lay flat, still hidden, still waiting. Some Frenchmen, those who had never fought Wellington, dared to hope that the ridge was only defended by guns, but the veterans of Spain knew better. The Goddamn Duke always hid his men behind a hillcrest if he could. In a moment, those veterans knew, the Goddamns would show themselves. That was what the French called the British soldiers, the Goddamns. It was not an affectionate nickname, but nor was it demeaning like the British name for the French; the Crapauds were the ‘toads', but the Goddamns were men who would curse God and there was something chilling in that thought.

The French drums paused.
‘Vive l'Empereur!'

‘Fire!' Another double-shotted volley smashed down the slope, and this time a British gunner officer heard the distinctive hailstone rattle as the canister balls struck the infantry's muskets. ‘We're hitting them now, boys!' A wet fleece hissed as it plunged into the hot barrel.

On the ridge the British infantry officers watched and waited. The drums were loud, while at the back of the French columns men were singing. The British battalion bands were also playing behind the ridge, making it a cacophonous battle of music that the French were winning as more and more men joined in to sing the Marseillaise,
‘Allons, enfants de la patrie,le jour
de
gloire est arrivé!'
The burnished Eagles were bright over the great marching masses that seemed to soak up the murderous gun-fire. A roundshot would butcher through the files, but the ranks closed up and marched on. The French officers, their swords drawn, urged their men on. They only needed to endure a few more seconds of hell, a few more blasts of the guns, then they would carry their bayonets over the ridge to vengeance.

But first, because Wellington's lines always beat the French columns, the surprise had to be unveiled.

‘Deploy!' The French officers shouted the command. The columns were now less than a hundred paces from the crest of the British ridge. The Voltigeurs had fallen back to join the columns' ranks and the British skirmishers had gone to join the line, so from this moment on it would be main force against main force. ‘Deploy!'

The rearmost ranks of the columns began to spread outwards. This was the surprise, that the column would suddenly become a line, but a line thicker and heavier than the British. Every French musket would be able to fire, and there would be far more French muskets. The defenders' line would not overlap the column, but would be overwhelmed by it. The French would fire their killing volley, then they would charge home. The day of glory had arrived.

 

The easternmost French column advanced on Papelotte, driving Prince Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar's men back to the sturdiest of the farm buildings. The westernmost column, advancing athwart the paved highway, swept either side of La Haye Sainte, driving the Riflemen back from their sandpit.

The Riflemen of the King's German Legion who garrisoned the farm itself were safe enough, for La Haye Sainte's walls were of thick stone, well loopholed, and the column had no intention of assaulting such a makeshift fortress. Yet now the farm proved its deadly worth as the garrison flayed the passing column with rifle-fire. The French ranks were blown ragged; assailed by volleys from the flank and double-shotted cannon from their front. In desperation the French ordered the farm attacked. A swarm of infantry broke down the hedges of the kitchen garden and orchard, forcing the defenders back towards the elm tree on the ridge behind. Not that their retreat mattered, for most of the German garrison was safe behind the stone walls of the farm buildings from where they kept up the stinging volleys that had already stalled and broken the attack of the westernmost column.

Wellington's breakwaters were working. Two of the French columns had been stopped, yet the central two columns were still crashing majestically and seemingly unstoppably up the wide bare slope between Papelotte and La Haye Sainte. The Duke, knowing that those central columns were the real danger, rode to where their attack would strike home.

The Prince of Orange took the Duke's place beside the elm tree and stared in horror at the turmoil that raged about La Haye Sainte. The Prince did not see that the farm had effectively broken one whole column of French infantry; instead he only saw a white-walled building lapped by smoke and ringed by enemies. Worse, he saw a stream of King's German Legion Riflemen running in headlong retreat from the farm. Wellington was nowhere in sight, which meant that fate and history had placed the Prince at this vantage point. He gnawed his fingernails as he stared, then knew he must not hesitate. La Haye Sainte could not fall! And if it had already fallen, then it must be retaken! He turned to see a Hanoverian battalion of his corps not far behind the ridge. The Hanoverian infantry wore British-style redcoats and were known to all the army as the Red Germans. ‘Tell the Red Germans to advance!' the Prince snapped at Rebecque.

‘Sir?' Rebecque had been flinching from the sight of the double-shotted cannons' execution of the closest Frenchmen, and had no idea what the Prince meant by his order.

‘The Red Germans, Rebecque! They are to advance on the farm and recapture it. Tell them to form line and to advance. Now!'

‘But, sir, the farm has not fallen and -'

‘Do it! Now!' the Prince screamed at his Chief of Staff.

Rebecque silently wrote the order, handed it to the Prince for signature, then sent an aide to the Red Germans. The Hanoverians deployed into line, then, to the tap of a drum, marched forward with fixed bayonets. They came over the ridge top and, with their colours hoisted high behind their centre companies, swept down onto the French who still milled ineffectually about La Haye Sainte's loopholed walls.

‘That's how it's done!' the Prince exulted. ‘Give them steel! Give them steel!'

‘Are you sure the French cavalry are gone, sir?' Rebecque asked very quietly.

‘You must be bold! Boldness is all! Oh, well done!' The Prince applauded because the Hanoverians had cleared the kitchen garden and were now working their way down the farm's open flank to the west. They were still in line and were firing steady volleys that drove the French infantry backwards.

The French infantry retreated, but their cavalry advanced. That cavalry had been held deep in the valley's floor, safe from the double-shotted British cannon, but now the left flank guard saw a line of enemy redcoats deployed in the rye. French swords rasped out of scabbards. It seemed that God was smiling on the cavalrymen this day.

The trumpets sounded.

Les
gros frères,
the Cuirassiers, led the charge while the pigtailed Dragoons rode behind the heavy horsemen. The British gunners were aiming at the remnants of the column's flank and, besides, were too obscured by smoke to see the cavalry's threat. The Hanoverians, firing fast volleys, were blinding themselves with smoke, but then the men of the right-hand companies heard the thudding of the hooves and stared in panic through the powder smoke to see the first glints of steel armour and raised swords.

‘Cavalry!'

‘Form square!'

It was much too late. The heavy horsemen fell on the open end of the Hanoverian line. The big Klingenthal swords, made of the best steel in Europe, hacked down, driven by the ton weight of man and horse. Grim faces, framed by the steel helmets, were flecked by the infantrymens' blood as the horsemen carved a path into the battalion. The Red Germans broke, fleeing in panic from the thunder of the hooves and the lightning blades. The colour party took refuge in the farm's garden, but most of the Hanoverians were caught in the open field and paid the price. Horsemen rode round the field, chasing the last refugees and cutting them down with merciless efficiency.

The Prince of Orange stared aghast from the elm tree. He saw a sword rise in the air, dripping blood from a death, then hack down to make another butcher's sound. ‘Stop them, Rebecque!' he said pathetically. ‘Stop them!'

‘Pray how, Your Highness?'

In the end the British gunners stopped the grisly business. The charge had brought the horsemen into the killing ground of the cannon and the double-shotted guns scoured the cavalry away from the field, but not before they had broken the Red Germans who lay with dreadful slashes, bleeding and twisting in the rye as they died. The Prince of Orange had struck again.

While to the east, where no farm protected the ridge, the two central columns of the French attack deployed into line, and drove on up to victory.

 

The Dutch-Belgian infantry at the re-entrant of the ridge took one close look at the nearest column and fled.

The British jeered the running men, but the Belgians did not care. Their sympathies were with the Emperor and so they ran to the forest and there, safe under its trees, waited for a French victory to restore Belgium to its proper throne.

The French drummers beat the
pas de charge
as the columns unfolded into the heavy musket line that would blast the ridge's crest with fire.

‘Stand up!' The order was British.

All along the ridge, like men springing full armed from the concealing earth, the redcoats stood. One moment the ridge had appeared empty, and the next it was crowned with a line of muskets.

‘Present!'

The French, so very close to the ridge top, had stopped for a heartbeat as their enemy had appeared so suddenly from the earth, but the French officers, seeing how hugely they outnumbered the Goddamns, screamed at the men to advance.

‘Fire!'